Popular file-sharing site WinMX.com ceased operating and the New York office of another, eDonkey.com, appeared to be closed, in the continuing legal fallout among underworld peer-to-peer music services.

When it comes to the profit potential of blogs, Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, calls himself a skeptic. It's a surprisingly pessimistic perspective coming from the Brit who has launched a network of 13 theme blogs -- including Fleshbot (porn), Gawker and Defamer (gossip), Gizmodo (gadgets) and Wonkette (politics). His most popular properties (Defamer, Gizmodo and Gawker) report between 4 million and 6 million visits per month and millions more pageviews, he and his top talent have been featured in articles in the ink-and-pulp press (Wired, The New York Times Magazine) and Denton rarely misses an opportunity to trumpet …

Google's book war with copyright holders is coming to a head with a lawsuit this week from the Writers Guild of America. The courts should take this opportunity to loosen unnecessary restrictions that are limiting innovation with no clear benefit to the public or rights holders.

A Paris-based media watchdog has released a free guide with tips for bloggers and dissidents to sneak past Internet censors in countries from China to Iran. Reporters Without Borders' "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" is partly financed by the French Foreign Ministry and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can be downloaded in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French.

Its new lease on life gives CEO Dick Parsons a chance to boost Time Warner stock, excite shareholders, and quiet Carl Icahn.

U.S. writers are suing Google Inc. in a federal court, alleging that the Web search leader's bid to digitize the book collections of major libraries infringes individual author's copyrights. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Google and its Google Print project, names as co-plaintiffs The Authors Guild and writers Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman.

Microsoft is reorganizing its corporate structure and giving one of its newest executives broader powers in an effort to better compete against its rivals, including Google and Yahoo. The corporate changes announced Tuesday are designed in part to help Microsoft move toward more internet-based service offerings, which have been championed by those competitors and are seen by some as a serious threat to Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system. The moves also are aimed at helping the company become more nimble.

The online games that were embedded in ads sponsored by the Internet travel agent Orbitz are coming back, this time on a Web site of their own. The Web site (orbitzgames.com), scheduled to go live today, revives games that have proved popular since they began appearing inside Orbitz online ads in 2001. Fans of the frivolous may once again use their PC's to play Sink the Putt and Swing for the Fences, as well as try new ones like Island Hop.

There are many approaches to sharing information you've found on the web, but a new free tool called eSnips is one of the most useful and intriguing yet seen. Net Snippets, the company that developed a product for post-search information management, has rolled out a new tool for collecting and sharing information. eSnips is a way cool tool?a little hard to describe but amazing in its capabilities.

In the wake of the backlash against direct-to-consumer advertising that has forced them to tone down the practice and put more of an emphasis on physician education, big pharmaceutical marketers have embraced a company that puts them in front of doctors every day.